By examining the cultural and political impact of Hermes, the social
archetype, we can glean further insights into Mercury, the astrological
archetype. [All quotations from "The Eternal Hermes: from Greek God to
Alchemical Magus", A Faivre, 1995.]

"The interest in Hermes-Mercury in the sixteenth century went along with a
rediscovery of Hermes Trismegistus, who now enjoyed a considerable vogue in
Europe, even exceeding that of the Middle Ages. Suddenly he came to the
front of the philosophical stage, at a moment when - partly thanks to him -
those currents began to come together that would later be called
collectively "esotericism." Two major events enabled esotericism to take on
a specific form. One of these was the discovery of the Jewish Kabbalah,
especially after the Diaspora of 1492. The other was the rediscovery of the
*Corpus Hermeticum*, brought to Florence in about 1460 by a monk traveling
from Macedonia (it had been unknown in the Middle Ages, except for the
*Asclepius*). After Marsilio Ficino's Latin translation of the *Corpus*
(1471) came innumerable editions in the course of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, as well as commentaries both erudite and enthusiastic
by [cites 8 authors] and more."

"At the same time there was a frequent tendency to "apollonize" Hermes
Trismegistus, as if to relegate to the background, even to obliterate, the
magical and theurgical aspect of these Alexandrian texts. Trismegistus's
success in the Renaissance certainly profited from the craze for Mercury,
with the result that in the sixteenth century, Hermes entered forcibly into
the cultural imagination under both forms, to the point of serving as a sort
of catch-all."

"Finally, we note one of the most remarkable traits of this presence of
Trismegistus - which is to say, of Hermetism,* in the precise sense of the
term: editions, studies, and commentaries of the Corpus Hermeticum - as his
irenical aspect. Wherever Hermes passes, religious tolerance prevails."

[* The use of "Hermetism" prevails now for designating the Alexandrian
Hermetic texts (the Hermetica), as well as the works in their wake until the
present time, while "Hermeticism" serves to designate much more generally a
variety of esoteric "sciences," like alchemy. "Hermeticist" refers to both
notions, particular and general (here, above, it connotes the general one);
the context alone indicates which one is meant. In the particular narrow
sense, "Hermetist" is sometimes used.]

Here we have a specifically implied peace-maker function for Mercury.
The peace that breeds religious tolerance can only come from an infusion of
pluralism that sufficiently dilutes the exclusivist tendencies of
fundamentalism. We can therefore see that somehow Mercury functions between
cultures in a way that defeats Saturn. It is a conduit for messages that
cross boundaries. The significance of this relates to our earlier noted
function of mediating between two realms. We may reasonably suspect that
Mercury helps some people to see connections between religions, perhaps
conveying insight into underlying spiritual relations and functions. Cosmic
consciousness is one consequence of transcending traditional social schisms,
and cynicism or pragmatism are other stances resulting when people free
themselves from the brainwashing of religious ideology.

"Thanks to the rich variety of his attributes, and his intermediate position
between religious and literary myth, Trismegistus had all the prerequisites
for becoming the axial figure of a philosophical history of the human race.
We have seen that ancient authors like Strabo, Marcus Manilius, etc., had
already presented him as such. Roger Bacon accorded him an important place
in this history, albeit a negative one. More than in the Middle Ages, the
need was felt in the Renaissance for conceptualizing the idea of "Tradition"
(in the esoteric sense, in which it has been understood since the 19th
century). At that time it was called the *philosophia perennis* (perennial
philosophy), a term defined by Agostino Steuco in 1540, in his book *De
Perenni Philosophia*. The name of Trismegistus is linked inseparably with
this. Pico della Mirandola and Marsilio Ficino prepared the way for Steuco
by calling Hermes the "first theologian", and speaking of a *prisca
theologia* (earliest theology), which began with Mercury and culminated with
Plato. The typical roster, or "philosophical" genealogy, took shape as
follows: Enoch, Abraham, Noah, Zoroaster, Moses, Hermes Trismegistus, the
Brahmins, the Druids, David, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, the Sibyls."

"A curious aspect of this Western "Tradition" is that it continually
confuses the mythological with the real. The extreme importance given to
the idea of *prisca philosophica* sowed a certain danger from the start,
making the authority of a text or doctrine depend on the guarantee of its
great age. The inevitable consequence followed in 1614, when Isaac Casaubon
discovered that the Trismegistic texts dated from no earlier than the second
and third centuries of the Common Era."

This is a significant sociological point: that the esoteric tradition is
mythic. Mythic components of culture perform a vital psychological
function; they structure collective belief systems. The most prevalent
current example is the Western myth of progress.

"These writings nonetheless enjoyed a long career up to our own day, if a
more discreet one; but there was now a tendency to seek elsewhere than in
the Hermetic texts for the mythic reference-point that supposedly guaranteed
authenticity. This went to the extreme of completely inventing histories
and rituals, which may have been reponsible for the appearance of the
Rosicrucians at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and of speculative
Freemasonry a century later. As for Paracelsus and his followers, and the
great Christian theosophy of Germany which manifested with Jacob Boehme,
they owe little to neo-Alexandrian Hermeticism, and give only a modest place
to Trismegistus."

Once a venerable tradition comes to seem too obviously mythic, it begins to
lose influence, but only on certain types of people. Others will continue
to believe in it, and some to exalt it, demonstrating the inertial effect
typical of a ruling paradigm. When a myth functions as a paradigm, it
shapes whatever cultures it has infiltrated.

"In 1488, only ten years after the publication of the *Corpus Hermeticum* in
Ficino's Latin translation and a dozen years after Botticelli's *Primavera*,
an artist inlaid the pavement of Siena Cathedral with a marvelous panel,
still visible: it shows Hermes Trismegistus himself in the form of a tall
and venerable bearded man, dressed in a robe and cloak, wearing a brimmed
miter, and surrounded by various persons, with the inscription "*Hermes
Mercurius Trismegistus Contemporaneus Moysii.*" Not long after, Pope
Alexander VI, the protector of Pico della Mirandola, commanded Pinturicchio
to paint a great fresco in the Borgia Apartments of the Vatican, abounding
with Hermetic symbols and zodiacal signs: one can see Hermes Trismegistus,
for once young and beardless, in the company of Isis and Moses."

"Mercury belongs not only to painting and emblems, but also to the political
and literary imagery that follows the course of historic and regional
circumstances. This served especially to remythologize, or to remythify,
the role bestowed on the sovereign. Thus in England there is the theme of
the magician-king or -queen. From Spenser and Elizabeth I until Pope and
Queen Anne, the planetary god Mercury was identified with the monarch, often
serving to represent his or her magic power. In Spenser's *Fairie Queene*
(1590), Gloriana (that is, Elizabeth) revives in the very bosom of
Protestantism the Medieval notion of a World-Emperor who will restore the
Golden Age by repairing the ravages caused by Adam's Fall. Queen Elizabeth
herself did not hesitate to turn for advice to the magus John Dee (author of
*Monas Hieroglyphica*, 1564), just as King Arthur took counsel with Merlin.
It is to the credit of Douglas Brooks-Davies that he has drawn attention
recently to the consequences of the identification, in England, of monarchy
and magic, using precisely the images of Mercury and Trismegistus. This
identification justified the pretension of realizing an ideal realm or
Empire, differing little from the Arthurian model. Here again, different
"traditions" came together in an interesting syncretism. On the one hand,
following many of his countrymen, Spenser saw England as a kind of Egypt.
On the other, the anti-Roman Hermeticism of Giordano Bruno (particularly of
his book *Spaccio de la bestia triomfante* [The Expulsion of the Triumphant
Beast, 1585] acted as a ferment in this country, where the tradition of the
Druids (supposed to be the descendants of Noah by his son Cham) was still
kept alive by those in power, and tied to the notion of the king's
sacerdotal and magical role. As we have mentioned, the Druids were often
included, at this period, in the tradition of the *prisci theologi*, despite
the absence of any writings surviving from them - or perhaps because of
that. This is why the English monarch, as a more or less complete
incarnation of these disparate elements, tends like Mercury to represent a
tension between Heaven and Earth, the scepter being regarded as a caduceus,
or vice versa. For this reason, too, the Wisdom of Trismegistus is
attributed to him or her. in the seventeenth century, and following the work
of Spenser, there are numerous works that carry this imagery, such as Ben
Johnson's *Mercury Vindicated* (1616), a panegyric of the Mercurial and
magical monarch that was performed at Court; and *Il Penseroso* (1645) of
Milton, which transmits the idea of a terrestrial and reformed monarchy,
evoked by a poet whose role in this instance is that of the visionary
intermediary, like an inspired Merlin beside his King Arthur."

Lest the reader miss the point, which is made more implicitly than
explicitly by the author, the political correlation illustrates a key
afore-mentioned function of Mercury. It may not be over-stating the case to
put it this bluntly: Mercury was mid-wife to the emergence of
protestantism. How? Remember the mediating function that provides a means
for conceiving intelligent relations between separate domains. Typically,
one domain is obvious, the other less so, or even hidden. Thus the relation
of gnosticism to christianity, for example, or, more to the point, that
between the latter and the prior (universal?) paganism. Hermes as source of
cosmic wisdom illuminates the dichotomy between what christians preach and
what they practise. On a personal level, who needs a priest as mediator
between you and God if you discover you can perform your own mediation?

"It required Carl Gustav Jung to discover a new fruitful perspective on
Hermes, this time more from the anthropological point of view. In his essay
"The Spirit Mercurius," Jung summarizes the multiple aspects of the
alchemical Mercury as follows:
1) Mercurius consists of all conceivable opposites. He is thus quite
obviously a duality, but is named a unity in spite of the fact that his
innumerable inner contradictions can dramatically fly apart into an equal
number of disparate and apparently independent figures.
2) He is both material and spiritual.
3) He is the process by which the lower and material is transformed into
the higher and spiritual, and vice versa.
4) He is the devil, a redeeming psychopomp, an evasive trickster, and
God's reflection in physical nature.
5) He is also the reflection of a mystical experience of the artifex
that coincides with the opus alchymicum.
6) As such, he represents on the one hand the self and on the other hand
the individuation process and, because of the limitless number of his names,
also the collective unconscious. (Hence the designation of Mercurius as mare
nostrum.)"

Jung here seems to be unable to see beyond the dichotomies and apparently
blames Mercury for presenting them; a superficial view which fails to
advance our understanding.

The author wonders "is a myth identifiable by a particular name? At least
twice, in Dante's Virgil and Rabelais' Panurge, we have come across Hermes
under a pseudonym. We can recognize him equally well in other literary
works, and by no means minor ones, such as Thomas Mann's *Zauberberg* (Magic
Mountain, 1924). Gilbert Durand, on the other hand, answered this question
in the negative, in a valuable and meticulous work of 1985 (see
Bibliography), where he evokes the "permanencies and derivations of the
myths of Mercury." Saying that a caduceus alone does not make a Mercury,
Durand gives the following elements as the essential signals: (a) the power
of the very small (it is true that Mercury is sometimes tiny, as in several
of Montfaucon's illustrations and alchemical figures; when his phallus is
large, it signifies spiritual fecundity); (b) the function of intermediary;
(c) the function of conductor of souls."

Here we encounter a new element, with a surprising relevant correspondence
to developments at the leading edge of science. The "power of the very
small" is a basic feature of chaos theory, now known as the science of
complexity, which came to prominence in the late '80s. The sensitive
dependency upon initial conditions of non-linear (natural) systems is one of
the main findings brought to light by the scientists who discovered chaotic
behaviour. Small differences tend to multiply in natural systems, and this
was popularised in relation to weather prediction, via the now-common saying
that the fluttering of a butterfly's wings can change the weather a few days
later. The intermediary function of Mercury is also seen in one of the
other main discoveries, which is that creativity emerges in nature at the
interface between two domains. New forms manifest at the boundaries, due to
the characteristics of the interaction between the two realms.

"In this way, Gilbert Durand was able to define a series of "explosions" of
Mercury, i.e., moments at which the myth intensifies. The first ones
stretch over long periods: half a millenium, or eight hundred years, in
Egypt (Thoth); then Greek Antiquity, and Roman Antiquity. But in Rome,
Mercury was not really a Latin god: Caesar regarded him as more a Gaulish
or Celtic one, as many Celtic temples and place-names attest. He is
basically Semitic: Phoenician, Carthaginian, Hebrew, Arab-in other words,
linked to peoples inclined to commerce and mobility."

So perhaps Mercury emerges into society via mobility between cultures and
the commerce that results. This points to the cultural function of the
trader, someone who buys from others and sells to others. In ancient times
inter-tribal and inter-civilisational trading was the norm, as exemplified
by the Asian caravan routes that functioned for millennia. The trader, thus
mediating between cultures, was the channel for cross-fertilisation of goods
and associated technology. Other than military conquest, this was the main
way that knowledge crossed cultural boundaries in the ancient world. We can
see that each such trade involved the trader acting as mediator between
otherwise separate cultures; the trader therefore functioning as linking
channel in the bipolar exchange of valuables.

"More illustrative of the process of "explosion" are the next four moments,
as given by Gilbert Durand: (A) the "Gothic Renaissance" of the thirteenth
and early fourteenth centuries, when alchemy flourished with personages such
as Arnold of Villanova and Albertus Magnus. Mercury then appeared as the
great agent of transmutation, the "intermediary" of the Work, often
associated with the moon (silver being the lunar state, and quicksilver the
planetary rapidity of that body). This was the age of Saint Bonaventura and
of Joachim of Fiore (the ripening of the Age of the Holy Spirit!); but it
would all collapse in the fourteenth century, with economic chaos, the Black
Death, and the Great Schism. (B) The Humanist epoch, in which Mercury as
intellectual seems to preside over printing and information.
Here he is "mercurial" rather than mercurian.
But this world collapsed, at the same time as Hermeticism, in the face
of the Enlightenment. (C) The end of the eighteenth and beginning
of the nineteenth century, when Mercury is ambiguous, veiling as much as he
reveals, as in the craze for hieroglyphs and secret societies. Besides, the
whole style of the epoch has Mercury's ambiguity: the language of the
Enlightenment serves the Illuminists themselves for speaking of obscure
matters, until at the end of the nineteenth century scholars such as
Marcellin Berthelot (author of *Les Origines del'Alchimie*, 1885) turn
Hermes-Mercury to Promethean purposes by considering alchemy merely as the
ancestor of chemistry! The epoch of positivism and materialistic science
obviously stands under the patronage of Prometheus. (D) Reacting against
this, the epistemological revolution of our time (especially the second half
of the twentieth century) calls on intermediaries, extending the relational
concept to every field of science and the mind (relativity, pluralism,
polarities, polysemiology, information exchange, etc.), and explores the
various possible paths of the inner quest as no era ever before. This kind
of revival of Hermes favors a form of "angelism", in the sense that Hermes
is called a messenger (angelos): a Byzantinism, but a creative one, suited
to times when institutions are crumbling, and the Barbarians are at the gate
of the West."

"The reader will perhaps agree that such a view of history stimulates
reflection. There is no doubt that it was Hermes who presided over those
periods so perceptively singled out by Gilbert Durand." More to our point,
Durand suggests general principles relevant to our search, even if
insufficiently specific.

"But at the same time, one feels the ambiguity of the very notion of "myth"
as applied to a mythological and literary character, whether it is
Prometheus or Hermes, Faust or Don Juan. This tracing of Hermes through
history, trying to single out the cultural traits which he anonymously
inspired, or the signifiers of certain constants of the imagination, comes
down in practice to a summary history of esotericism itself - not that the
pertinence of that is in question here. This is esotericism as understood
from a perspective broad enough to include the Philosophy of Nature, in the
Romantic sense, and the synthesizing eclecticism of Pico or Ficino, as well
as traditional theosophy and alchemy. The enterprise is a perfectly
legitimate one, in so far as esotericism, thus encompassed, is altogether
under the sign of Hermes, and considering that this quicksilver god
transcends its boundaries (Durand also speaks of the seafaring and commerce
of the sixteenth century). But in the process, one runs the risk of a
certain number of images disappearing from the canvas, some of them
cherished ones, simply because they do not fit the three signalling traits
that Durand proposes. It was not "specific" of Hermes to disguise himself
as a bishop; to be the founder of Germany; or to double as god (Mercury) and
mortal (the Trismegistus of the euhemerists). The two methods are not
exclusive: differing in methodology, they complement and enrich one
another. One should, and can, discover the name of Hermes-Mercury through
every epoch, while at the same time searching for his active presence in
places where his name and explicit attributes are wanting."

"Court de Gebelin, on the basis of a Celtic etymology, suggested that one
read in "Mercury" the words "sign" (merc) and "man" (cur). Thus he would be
the signbearer, the marker, the lighter of beacons; the one who helps us
interpret history and our own lives by giving us symbolic landmarks. His
signs are never abstract or rigid; their mediating function reflects the
nature of *medicurrius* or *medius currens* (as Saint Augustine and Servius
said) - of that which "runs between," or "in the middle." "Ever a
transitional figure," writes William G. Doty, "Hermes divinizes transition.
He calls eternally into question any simplistic gendering, any reductionist
separation between this world and another, any other. Hermetically one
opens out endlessly, never losing down nor attaining the point of stasis,
but always evincing anticipations of futures all the stories of the past
have only begun to intimate." These paths and ways, unknown to vagabonds
and ideologues, knit together the opposites in ever novel configurations.
And if, on the way, Hermes sometimes steals the substance of what his rod
touches, it is only to regenerate it through circulation."

This last point is exemplified by the circulation of trade secrets in our
time. Oft stolen, they regenerate the economies that receive them. The
point about paths that combine opposites in novel configurations corresponds
to our prior reference to the discoveries from chaotic systems. Most
important though, is the etymological suggestion from de Gebelin that
Mercury means `the signifier'. A semiotic function must be added to our
accumulating list of essential catalytic modes of operation of the Mercury
archetype.

It seems that the intermediary function of Mercury, when combined with the
binary relation between the two domains or fields that it mediates, is
fundamental, and also that it manifests in a considerable number of
influential ways both in the psyche and in society. When Mercury presents
us with a sign, whatever the context, it is an informational signal that we
must decode to obtain the intelligence that is delivered by this
transmission process. When our psyche is one domain, and
society, or some other part of the cosmos is the second domain, Mercury's
function is to inform us by providing information to our mind about that
other domain - regardless of whether we consciously observe it, learn about
it via an intermediary informational channel (internet, telephone, book,
conversation, etc), or receive intuition about it from our subconscious.